Extra Surplus-Value

Individual capitalist enterprises, by increasing the productivity of their labor, make the individual value of the products they produce lower than the social value, but still sell that that portion of excess surplus-value at the social value.

In capitalist society, there are differences in production technology and management between different enterprises in the same branch of industry, so that the individual values of similar products produced by these enterprises are bound to vary. But the commodities are exchanged not according to individual values but according to social values determined by the socially necessary labor-time. If an individual capitalist’s enterprise adopts a new method of production and increases the productivity of labor, shortening the individual labor-time used to produce that product below the socially necessary labor time, it will make the individual value of that product lower than the social value. If the commodity is still sold at the social value, a difference between the individual value of the commodity and the social value is obtained, and this is the process by which extra surplus-value arose. However, the situation in which individual enterprises achieve an extra surplus-value will only be temporary, because the determination of value by labor-time, which makes itself felt to the individual capitalist who applies the new method of production by compelling him to sell his goods under their social value, this same law, acting as a coercive law of competition, forces his competitors to adopt the new method. This extra surplus-value disappears as soon as the new method of production is generalized, other enterprises compete to increase the productivity of labor in pursuit of extra surplus-value. At this point, the capitalists’ competition for extra surplus-value leads to a general increase in the productivity of labor of society, a decrease in the value of the means of life associated with the reproduction of labor-power, which in turn leads to a decrease in the value of labor-power, a shortening of the necessary labor-time, a relative lengthening of the surplus labor-time, and the realization of the production of relative surplus-value. Therefore, the realization of the production of relative surplus-value is precisely the result of the pursuit of extra surplus-value by individual enterprises.